You Know What We Need? A Harmonica
by Mistress Scribbles
Summary: There comes a time in every man's life when the only thing to do is to lie on the floor in the dark - listening to The Blues and discussing life, death, women and cats over a bottle of Bourbon. D & G friendship.


_Right, then. This is my first TNG fic, due to a recently re-ignited love of one of my oldest fandoms. Tried to keep it as simple as possible since this universe is simply huge and I certainly don't know it inside-out. Many thanks to Realmlife for going through the story with a fine tooth comb and Trek Encylopedia. If a faulty detail slipped the net, I apologise. This is a complete one-shot, set largely between Generations and First Contact (on the spanking new Enterprise E, although Geordi still has the old vizor) with a short post-Nemesis coda._

_Oh and yadda yadda yadda, don't own the rights, blah blah make no profit, yakkety-schmakkety just for fun._

_Hope you enjoy!_

_Scribbles_

-x-

YOU KNOW WHAT WE NEED? A HARMONICA.

-x-

'Hey.'

'Hello.'

Geordi slumped down in one of the many chairs he could only imagine Data kept around for aesthetic reasons and tilted his head up to the ceiling. There was something odd about the room, but in his current state of mind Geordi couldn't particularly be bothered to work out what.

'I bet Chen has beautiful eyes,' he announced at last. 'Does Ensign Chen have beautiful eyes, Data?'

There was a pause as the android considered this.

'They are slightly larger than the average adult male human of Oriental descent,' Data answered, 'brown irises, the left eye is set half a millimetre lower than the right…'

'I bet they're just dreamy,' Geordi interrupted, bitterly. 'I bet women just lose themselves in his eyes.'

'I would not know.' There was another pause. 'Geordi?'

'Yeah?'

'You appear to be inebriated.'

Geordi raised the bottle to his lips. 'Not nearly inebriated enough, my friend. Not nearly enough.'

'Were you not supposed to be spending this evening with Lieutenant Blackburn?'

'Yep.'

'Then why are you here?'

'Gladys cancelled. She cancelled everything.' He took another swig.

'Because you took her to task over her flirtatious behaviour with Chen. Hmm. It was I who advised you to do so. I apologise. It is probably unwise of you to come to me for relationship advice…'

'It wasn't just you, Data…'

'What would I know…?' continued Data, more to himself.

'Everyone said I should talk to her – Riker, Troi… in the end I didn't get the chance. She broke it off before I could breathe a word.'

'Hence the bottle.'

'Hence the bottle.' Geordi drank again. 'Real Kentucky Bourbon. From ol' Kentucky, no less. From ol' Mother Earth herself.'

'Do you believe it is wise to drink such a large quantity of alcohol over the course of an evening, Geordi?'

'No. But then I'm not planning on drinking the whole bottle. I was never supposed to drink this whole bottle on my own.'

'Oh?'

'I got this bottle for Gladys, for our three month anniversary… I mean, three months is damn good going, for me. Practically married, for God's sake… only I guess we never made that benchmark. So she doesn't get to have any. Instead I'm going to sit here and I'm going to drink this fine whiskey…' he offered the bottle. 'With your help.'

'Alcohol will not affect me,' Data told his friend flatly.

'Will it not? Really?' Geordi raised his eyebrows with a sarcasm so exaggerated that even Data could pick up on it. 'I truly had no idea.' He pushed the bottle across the floor over to the android. 'I just want to drink with my friend and complain about women while you listen and nod occasionally, OK? It's just the done thing in this sort of situation.'

Data glanced over at his friend, took a sip, pulled a face and passed it back. 'Why does the appeal of alcohol still endure? It has no gustational merits whatsoever.'

Geordi picked up the bottle. 'Because it puts a fire in your belly and cotton wool in your brain, that's why.'

Data shook his head, wearily. 'Organisms.'

Geordi took a long swig, lifting his vizored eyes up to the ceiling again. He suddenly realised what was strange about the room. There was no energy coming from the lighting units, and from the low levels of residual energy, they hadn't been working for several hours.

'Data?'

'Yes?'

'Have you switched all the lights off?'

'Yes. Does it bother you?'

'No.' Geordi paused. 'Data?'

'Yes?'

'Does this have anything to do with whatever reason you have for lying on the floor?'

Data glanced up at Geordi again, but didn't move from his position, laid out on the floor in a cross shape, his arms out at right angles to his straight body. Geordi couldn't imagine a time when he'd seen somebody 'sprawl' with such a mathematically precise neatness before, or ever would again.

'I was wondering when you were going to mention that,' Data told him. 'The growth I found on Spot's throat.'

'Yes?'

'Inoperable.'

'Ouch.'

Data nodded up at the dark ceiling. 'It was indeed causing her considerable pain. That was why I made the decision…' He sighed a little. 'Dr Crusher did it at 1543 hours. I asked her because she is very gentle. She did not seem to mind giving medical assistance to an animal on this occasion, she said that since Spot was… practically family…' Data trailed off.

'I meant, "Ouch" for you.' Geordi offered the bottle again.

'I feel no "pain", as such.' Data accepted the bottle. 'However, I think you ought to know I am feeling very depressed.'

'Hence the lights.'

'And the floor. After she died it took me three hours, seven minutes and thirteen seconds to believe I was ready to activate my emotion chip. I cried for three hundred and twenty eight seconds. After which, I was struck by the overwhelming urge to lie down in the dark, and reminisce.'

Geordi pondered this for a moment. 'You know what, Data? That sounds like the best idea anyone's had round here for a good, long time.' He got up off the chair. 'Care if I join you?'

'Please do.' Data continued to gaze upward as Geordi settled himself down on the floor next to him. 'Although the effect of the lack of lighting may be lost on you…'

'Data, I got all the darkness I'll ever need, at the lift of a vizor.' Geordi pulled the device from his face and laid it on his chest.

There was a pause.

'I suppose,' said Data after a while, 'our current situations are fairly similar. You are grieving the loss of your relationship with a female, with whom you had come unusually close, as am I. How was it that Commander Riker put it once…? Spot was "the Lady in my life". And now she, like Lieutenant Blackburn, is gone.'

Geordi groped for the bottle in his blindness. 'Can't live with 'em,' he toasted, 'can't live without 'em.'

'That is wildly inaccurate on both counts,' frowned Data. 'For example…' he paused. 'That is another adage, is it not?'

'It is.' Geordi took a long swig in the silent darkness. 'You know, if we're gonna lie here and feel sorry for ourselves properly, we should really have some suitable music.'

'Very well. Put on whatever you wish.'

'Computer,' called Geordi, 'play us The Blues.'

The ship's computer chirruped. 'There are over 10,000 pieces on file under that musical genre,' the calm, female voice told him. 'Please specify…'

'Just… The Blues.' Geordi snapped. 'Da. Blues. Y'know the sort of thing - my woman done left me, my dog up and died…'

'My _cat_ up and died,' corrected Data as a maudlin acoustic guitar riff began to flood the blackness.

'I don't really think Blues musicians were really big Cat Lovers,' Geordi told him.

Data took the bottle. 'Perhaps that explains why they were always so unhappy.'

Geordi just grinned, and listened as the gravel voiced singer recounted a tale of mid-20th Century woe.

'I should have a wife by now,' announced Data, suddenly.

Although Geordi couldn't see his friend, he still turned his face towards him anyway. 'What?'

'…or at least a long-term partner,' Data clarified. 'I feel it is a relationship I should experience. Particularly now that I am… alone. I am constantly developing mastery over my emotions, I should be quite capable of an ongoing sexual relationship by now…'

'Are you seriously suggesting that you get a girlfriend as a cat replacement?' asked Geordi, incredulously.

'I do not see why not. I acquired Spot shortly after Tasha was killed. Counsellor Troi did once mention to me that she believed the incidents were related.' Data paused. 'At the time I saw no correlation between the loss of a female colleague with whom I had a complicated and not entirely platonic relationship, and the ownership of a cat. Now, however, I am not so certain. Perhaps my fondness for Spot was always simply the manifestation of a wish to care for a woman.'

'Data, the best thing to fill the void a pet leaves in your life is another pet. Why don't you just get another cat?'

'No.' Data sighed. 'It too will only die, eventually.'

'Animals'll do that.'

There was another pause as Data considered Geordi's comment.

'Everybody is going to die,' concluded the android, sadly.

Geordi grabbed the bottle off him. 'I could have gone for a walk around a now long-sunk Maldivian Atoll on the Holodeck. Or played poker with Will and Beverly, thrown myself into work, even. But, no. "I know," I thought, "I'll go see Data. He'll cheer me up".'

'You are all, essentially, animals. Every being that I care for is a creature that ages and dies. And eventually you will all die, and leave me on my own.'

'Then you'll make new friends,' Geordi told him. 'You won't be alone. You might even exist to see new synthetic life forms be created, like yourself.'

'Like Lal, you mean? Like Lore? Did they live long lives? Did they provide me with contentment or companionship?'

'Are you trying to be sarcastic? I've told you before, Data, it really doesn't suit you.'

'Perhaps the acquisition of a spouse is indeed a bad idea,' added Data, half to himself, 'since she too would grow old and perish. As will all of my friends. As will you. And I shall be left lying alone, in the dark, on the floor.'

Geordi shook his head. 'Data, you're talking like somebody who hasn't been shot at countless times. Like somebody who's never been decapitated in an explosion and had his head come back from the 19th Century the long way, or recently crashed half a Starship into a planet.'

Data just frowned, unseen.

'Our line of work's not exactly the safest in the universe,' Geordi clarified. 'Just because we don't know whether you're ever gonna just wind down naturally like the rest of us will doesn't mean you're guaranteed to live forever. You're all too mortal, Data. I should know, I've saved your synthetic hide more than once or twice.' He shrugged and took another sip. 'You never know, you might strike lucky. You might be dead before the rest of us, and it might be me that ends up lying all alone, listening to sad music and drinking straight from the bottle.'

'I believe that to be unlikely,' Data replied.

'Luck of the draw,' Geordi responded. 'But I tell you what, if you _are_ right and I go first, I think this would be as good a tribute as any.'

'You would like me to drink whiskey on the floor as a mark of remembrance?'

'Sure. And if the impossible does happen and I do end up outliving you, I'll do the same. Deal?'

'Geordi, you are being very...' Data paused briefly, searching for the correct word. 'Silly. You have consumed far too much…'

'Do we have a deal or not?'

Data sighed. 'Yes. We have a "deal".'

'Excellent.' Geordi beamed. 'We have a Pact. I've never had a Pact with a friend before, I feel like we should be doing this in a treehouse or something, or spit on our hands…' he didn't have to be able to see to know that his best friend was giving him a confused look. 'Joke, Data. Joke.'

There was another, very long pause. The track they had been listening to came to an end, and a new one began.

'You know what we need right now?' asked Geordi in the blackness. He heard Data draw breath to hazard a response to his random question, but answered himself before the android had chance to speak. 'A Harmonica.'

'You play Harmonica?'

'No. But it would add to the mood.'

'Commander Riker may have one,' suggested Data, 'we could ask.'

'Nah,' Geordi sighed. 'Way too much effort. Let's just stay right here.'

* * *

He walked slowly into his quarters, breathing long, slow, deliberate breaths, feeling the weight of the bottle in his hand, thinking. Thinking. Remembering.

'Lights off,' he ordered, softly.

He barely looked down at the bottle – the bottle that had taken over five weeks to find, the bottle that was a good decade his senior - but unscrewed its virgin cap swiftly and unceremoniously, throwing the stopper over his shoulder. He sure as Hell wasn't going to need_that_. Oh no. He was going to drink and drink from that fine bottle of very old, very precious Bourbon until it was nothing but empty glass and a hangover.

First things first, though…

He got down on the floor, lying on his back, facing the ceiling, and, since he no longer had a vizor to remove, closed his eyes.

'Computer. Play me the Blues. Any Blues.'

As the track began he raised the bottle to his lips and took a good, long swig.

'Like I said,' he announced, eventually, 'luck of the draw.'

But, of course, there was no reply.


End file.
